The folks at WREG TV have also been following this case and have provided great coverage of the case. Here more here and below. don't forget to send any comments you have on the WREG coverage to: shaun.chaiyabhat@wreg.com

DeAunta Farrow

Is the police shooting of 12 year-old DeAunta Farrow the reason several seats at West Memphis City Hall were empty Thursday? Every black council member was a no-show at a regular meeting of the city council, and some say it was no accident.

There's talk of a boycott to force the resignation of the city's police chief after one of his officer's killed Farrow. The officer was cleared of any wrongdoing, but that hasn't stopped calls for the badge of the city's top cop. Now a threat of a boycott to bring city business to a standstill.

Mayor William Johnson says, "I've been in office nine years and this is the first time that we've had to cancel a council meeting because of a lack of a quorum."

It may be coincidence that every black city council member was a no-show, but operation HELP says it played a role.

"We asked our councilmembers not to participate because of the indifference and the insensitivity of the African American community from the Mayor," says Hubert Bass with Operation HELP. "And whatever other reasons that the council felt that they should not participate, that's on them. But we believe that they responded to us."

Other council members were shocked, and some think a boycott may be underway. Thursday's meeting was supposed to cover passage of a city budget as well as possible discussion of pay raises for council members. More HERE

AAPP: What do you think? Should the black city council membdes shut down a city, in order to get a police commissioner to resign?

Friday, December 14, 2007

Al Sharpton's threat to scuttle Chicago's Olympic bid shows precisely the kind of creativity and leveraging that I believe it may take to fight police brutality in America.

A leading U.S. civil rights advocate vowed on Monday to wage a worldwide campaign to scuttle Chicago's bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games if the city doesn't act quickly to stop what he characterized as "unchecked police misconduct."

In a news conference outside Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's office, the Rev. Al Sharpton said he would take alleged abuse victims on a world tour to talk with Olympic Committee officials involved in selecting the host city if Chicago failed to start implementing reforms at its scandal-plagued police department by the end of December. Reuters via National Action Network

Whatever the result of this initiative, Al Sharpton will certainly get the attention of the "system" in Chicago. I wouldn't be surprised if it was even related, in some way, to the decision of the IRS and the FBI to investigate Sharpton's finances.

In any case, this is a perfect example of how Blacks can use economic pressure creatively to force an end to police brutality.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

If you look at the above video, it's clear that this police officer had decided to tase this family man, who was riding with his wife, even before the man was stopped. There is no reason for the tasing except that the policeman's whim.

I'm talking about a real High Tech Lynching, torture and killing of a black man in Georgia just a few years ago. After watching the video in horror, I decided to look into the federal laws against this type of high tech lynching, if any. Then I started to wonder what was the history of prosecution of lynching in America? As there seems to be no prosecution of African Americans taser torture victims, who are being tortured every day in the streets of America by means of the new high tech lynching tool, the taser.

This is what I learned:

AAPP: Now it appears the threat of lynching has been influenced by another major event, internet activism.

For most of the history of the United States, lynching was rarely prosecuted, and when it was, it was under state murder statutes. In one example in 1907-09, the U.S. Supreme Court tried its only criminal case in history, 203 U.S. 563 (U.S. v. Sheriff Shipp). Shipp was found guilty of criminal contempt for lynching Ed Johnson in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Starting in 1909, over 200 bills were introduced to make lynching a federal crime, but they failed to pass. During the Roosevelt Administration, the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department tried, but failed, to prosecute lynchers under Reconstruction-era civil rights laws. The first successful federal prosecution of a lyncher for a civil rights violation was in 1946, and by that time, the era of lynchings as a common occurrence was over.

Many states now have specific anti-lynching statutes. California, for example, defines lynching, punishable by 2-4 years in prison, as "the taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer," with the crime of "riot" defined as two or more people using violence or the threat of violence. Read More about Lynching HERE

Rewind!

Although lynchings became much more rare in the era following the civil rights movement, they do still occur sometimes. In 1981, KKK members in Alabama randomly picked out a nineteen-year-old black man, Michael Donald, and murdered him in retaliation for a jury's acquittal of a black man accused of murdering a police officer. The Klansmen were eventually caught, prosecuted, and convicted, and a seven million dollar judgment in a subsequent civil suit bankrupted a subgroup of the Klan, the United Klans of America.[20]

In 1998, James Byrd, Jr. was murdered by Shawn Allen Berry, Lawrence Russel Brewer, and John William King, in Jasper, Texas. Byrd, a 49-year-old father of three who had accepted an early-morning ride home with Berry, King, Brewer, was instead beaten, stripped, chained to a pickup truck, and dragged for almost three miles (5 km). An autopsy suggested that Byrd was alive for much of the dragging and died only after his right arm and head were severed when his body hit a culvert. [3] The three men dumped their victim's mutilated remains in the town's segregated Black cemetery and then went to a barbeque. [4] Many of the aspects of this modern lynching echo the social customs surrounding older lynchings documented in Without Sanctuary. King wore a tattoo depicting a black man hanging from a tree as well as Nazi, Aryan and Confederate Knights of America symbols.

Local authorities immediately treated the murder as a hate crime and requested FBI assistance. The murderers were later caught and stood trial. Brewer and King were sentenced to death. Berry received life in prison.

In 2006, five white teenagers—Justin Ashley Phillips, 18; Kenneth Eugene Miller Jr., 18; Lucas Grice, 17; Christopher Scott Cates, 17; and Jerry Christopher Toney, 18—were given various sentences for the second degree lynching of Isaiah Clyburn, 17, a young black man in South Carolina. South Carolina law defines second degree lynching as "[a]ny act of violence inflicted by a mob upon the body of another person and from which death does not result shall constitute the crime of lynching in the second degree and shall be a felony. Any person found guilty of lynching in the second degree shall be confined at hard labor in the State Penitentiary for a term not exceeding twenty years nor less than three years, at the discretion of the presiding judge."

Fast forward - 2003,04,05 and 06. There were limited voices being raised in the states concerning the high tech lynching of black folk. But at least the United Nations was looking at what has been going on. They saytasers are a form of torture.

I guess most white bloggers are scared of getting labeled by the FBI and or Homeland Security. i must give up some respect to bloggers like The Liberal Journal.

I'm glad Einstein was not scared, even though he was branded as a communist sympathizer.

But I guess black folks can't be scared, the only fear we may have is the fear of our children or our children's children getting branded, tortured and Tasered While Black.

I wonder why Obama, Edwards, Hillary and the rest of the Democrats (that's who we vote for by over 80% every 4 years) have gotten a free ride on the question of black folks being Tasered 'and tortured' While Black.

It appears no one in black leadership, except local branches of NAACP and the afrospear have been concerned. Maybe it's because older black leaders are more concerned about Bill Clinton being every bit as black as Barack or get this, how many black women Bill Clinton has made love with?

Thank God for the afrospear, and thank God for local branches of the NAACP.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

After getting beaten by police in the, get this, "Plantation State" of R.I. this young man could not take no more, he grabbed the police officers gun, and shot him. The rest is history, he jumped out the window of the police department. Check out what happened next.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Weeks after the first meeting, the "Purification and Standardization" began. The coalition was structured by Ada and her supporters into many committees all led by those who supported Ada. There was a media committee, a PR committee... it felt more like a marketing firm than a grass roots coalition.

But the one committee that I hated the most and what got the most love from the leadership was the so-called 'Legal' Committee. This group was mostly brothers and sister who were either paralegals and or actual lawyers. Now I'm not putting down people for being lawyers, but really, if you want something to be dragged out, watered down, and just plain overly complicated, then all you have to do is get lawyers involved. The committee was seen as the real engine behind the organization because they were working on putting together and putting forth the proposal for a Citizens Review Board for the "Powers That Be".This CRB was envisioned by the leaders of the coalition to be made of people of color, women, men, etc., so that if an incident involving police would ever come about where someone was murdered by them (for brandishing a hair brush for example), the Citizens Review Board would have the "power" to discipline the police rather than leave it to Internal Affairs and the Police management who uphold the "Blue Wall of Silence". But what was worse was that this committee was to be reported to by the other sub-committees; so if the media group or PR group came up with fliers, or proposals to talk to the media, it all had to go through the Legal Committee.

Why? Because Ada loved her some Suits. She, like Jew Don (who proved this tendency later) was at a point in her life where she saw being a street activist as a powerless role; a loser who rages outside of society. I think Ada saw herself and those she sought alliances with to be activist dipped in dandyism; savvy in law and media.

While it does not hurt for activists to know some aspects of the law for protection and self defense in the courts, or activist to have the basic skills in writing press releases, I think we should strive to have a balance in all skills from designing Websites, coming up with tactics to outwit the police at demos, and make a good vegetarian burrito during brainstorm sessions.

But Ada wanted to put all her eggs in the Legal committee who would come up with some brilliant blueprint of a civilian review board. The thing is, Civilian Review Boards have been proposed in Berkley, Boston, New York and each one of those proposals brought forth to the Mayors of each of those cities have either been rejected or ignored. Why? In this society where the police's main role is to protect property and make sure that those who don't own anything don't fuck with those who do, we will never see the ruling class give regular folks power over the police.

There has been more than enough documentation that covers police response time for suburban dwellers vs. those who live the black community or barrios, so it's obvious who they truly answer to. I've heard of police that when they talk amongst each other they describe the non-ghetto denizens as “Tax Payers” or “Citizens”.

As I conclude this blog entry I wonder how effective my writing would have been if Weblog technology existed in the fall of 1989 when, at the onset of angry people of color forming to organize a movement to have the murderers of Ida Lee Delaney jailed?

Would the micro-managing, Democrat-shilling, Back-door Stalinist, public image-obsessed leadership have read this blog and saw that they were heading for failure and dragging all of us who thought we were fighting the good fight into the dark pit of innocence lost? I doubt it. If anything, me blogging about that movement and the leaders would have gotten me gas faces and physical threats.

The jury convicted Mr. Gonzales of voluntary manslaughter a year later. Thanks to Ada and friends' reformist manipulations with their straw man issue of chasing the CRB or fighting it, we never thought about the fact that we should have been focusing on how the cops should have been convicted knowing that this is a culture that doesn't jail the rich, the powerful, or the drones who protect them; the police. But there you go, Gonzales gets a conviction of manslaughter. If someone died on your wet front porch from a fall you can liable for it and get a manslaughter conviction.

But Gonzales and his accomplices chased somebody down for thirteen miles, emerged from their cars with guns and even though Ida had a gun and was even shooting first, they never identified themselves or even called for back-up of officers who REALLY were ON duty and not drunk.

It did come out during Gonzales's trail that he got into an argument with Delaney provoking her into the round of shooting that resulted in her death. Ada and Jew Don did ultimately become elected officials. They both served on the city council and yet killer cops have been able to continue their god work killingPOC and working class people without worry of them going to jail. This disproves that "working within the system" thing.

If you want to see a movement that seeks justice for victims of police brutality have a fighting chance to see a positive end to their goals whatever they may be, then there needs to be a few factors involved:

1. Democratic Process - wasting valuable meeting time with "Who is too radical", and "Who will get us bad press" just so you can purge undesirables is bullshit. It demoralizes people and those who have no idea of the past histories of one radical group vs. the moderates will confuse and run of the fresh faces.

2. Ok, so you want a Civilian Review Board. Cool, but we can chew gum and walk at the same time; let's look at all of our options from CBRs to jailing cops and raising consciousness in the community regarding the one-sidedness of the law regarding police murders. There should be something for everyone in movements like these.

3. We Autonomists talk about the vanguardist left and the shit they do in grassroots movements. Yes, but what about the 'cult of personalty' leadership that always assumes leadership among the grassroots? We need to give ourselves the confidence it takes to to rise up and take ownership of causes without waiting for the usual suspects to come and save us. These are people who have in some ways become "brand names" and if they see themselves as products with brand names, then they will do what ever it takes to protect their names - that means no direct conflict with the state by demanding the powers to jail their protectors the cops. It's best quell the anger and creativity of a community than to fight the impossible fight.

But the fight is not impossible if we really put forth consciousness-raising efforts to get people to understand who the police really are and why they don't get jailed. If we do this, then people will understand what they are up against and there is no telling where they will be willing to go to get justice. It may seem to be an open-ended solution, but shutting them down and making them chase carrots is not a good alternative.

Yes you heard me, as reported NPR : Death by Excited Delirium may just be the greatest new diagnosis or coverup. You see, excited delirium is a controversial diagnosis increasingly used by medical examiners to explain why people die (mostly black) are suddenly in police custody.

Police agencies and police training groups are warning police: "During the restraint process, the subject will often be grunting and making animal-like noises." More HERE

(CBS) You may not find the diagnosis "excited delirium" in a medical dictionary, but it’s popping up more and more around the country, especially when people die right after brawling with the police. More HEREGet this, The PoliceOne website says, excited delirium (ED) episodes most likely occur between Thursday and Sunday, with Sunday the most common day, Lawrence has found. The hot months, May through September, are the most common time of year. Male subjects in their early 30s are most frequently afflicted, with subjects under 20 or over 50 least likely; female ED subjects are "extremely rare." Of illegal substances potentially involved, cocaine is most common (more than half the cases). Alcohol is common, too. More HERESounds like the time black folks are out having a good time to me.

So, watch out black folks, police department accross america are training about excited delirium, and black folks are the target. Warn your babies, warn your children, black males are warned. Don't forget if you get zapped by 50,0000 or so volts in succession, never grunt or make animal-like noises you will be zapped, again, and again, and again, until you are dead.

The police routinely lie to get confessions, to force defendants to accept plea bargains, and to thereby get convictions. But look what happened when a defendant secretly recorded a police interrogation and then sprung that recording on a police officer in court:

NEW YORK - A teenage suspect who secretly recorded his interrogation on an MP3 player has landed a veteran detective in the middle of perjury charges, authorities said Thursday.

Unaware of the recording, Detective Christopher Perino testified in April that the suspect "wasn't questioned" about a shooting in the Bronx, a criminal complaint said. But then the defense confronted the detective with a transcript it said proved he had spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to persuade Erik Crespo to confess — at times with vulgar tactics.

Once the transcript was revealed in court, prosecutors asked for a recess, defense attorney Mark DeMarco said. The detective was pulled from the witness stand and advised to get a lawyer. Yahoo New

This shows the importance of the AfroSpear's Freedom Technology Christmas campaign, because if the defendant hadn't had an MP3 player to record the police interrogation, that officer's word might have been accepted as fact. Instead, the officer could be looking at some jail time.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

On November 20th, a man by the name of Donnell Williams, 39, was at home alone . Mr. Williams is hearing impaired, has a glass eye, and walks with a slight limp. He was taking a shower when 4 officers responding to a call of 'shots fired' knocked on his door. Mr. Williams did not (and could not) hear them and he continued to shower.

When he exited the shower, he walked into his living room, dressed only in a towel to find 4 Wichita Police Officers, one of which was carrying a bullet proof shield. Mr. Williams saw the officers gesturing to him, but could not hear what they were saying so he motioned towards his hearing aid which was sitting on his dining room table.

When Mr. Williams turned to get his hearing aid from the table, he was shot with a taser gun by one of the officers. (remember; he was wearing only a towel, and motioning towards his hearing aid which was sitting on the table) more HERE and HERE - Hearing Impaired Man Tased by Police more HERE

Monday, December 3, 2007

Why are black women and men being tortured throughout America and no one is saying anything? Not our congressional leadership, not one black mayor has called for an investigation for why black folk are be tortured and being "Tasered why Black." Hat Tip: AJ at the blogover analyze it

Check out this new incident provided by statesman.com It shows an assault and torture of what sounds like a black women, because the black women did not give her registration and insurance information quick enough. See the dashboard police camera showing incident. Also check out what the women says.

Keep in mind Cpl. Thomas O'Connor begins yelling at this man 16 secs in and asks him to step out 27 seconds in.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

have you ever been concerned that America will ever become a police state? Is police violence in America only directed at blacks and the poor? Check out this video and then answer the questions for yourself.

Taser use by police drew national attention this week after video surfaced on the Internet of police shocking a university student in Florida who persistently questioned Sen. John Kerry during a forum and refused to yield the microphone to others. The incident generated a fierce debate about free speech, use of force and the motives of the student, a known prankster. [The police always have an "excuse," don't they?]

University of Florida President Bernie Machen said the use of the Taser, with the student yelling, "Don't Tase me, bro!" was "regretful." He requested a state probe of campus police actions and placed two officers on leave.

In Ohio, another police officer was on administrative leave Thursday after video taken from his cruiser showed him jolting a woman with a Taser gun at least twice after she was handcuffed, police and city administrators said. Fox News

Was this man Killed because he was addicted to drugs? Was this his crime?

African American Political Pundit says: The Congressional Black Caucus is sleeping at the wheel. There needs to be Congressional Hearings on why black women and men are being killed on the streets of America in High Tech lynchings. Black Folks are being "Tasered While Black"

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The driver who died on Tuesday after police used a Taser gun on him during efforts to take him into custody had an arrest history 14 pages long and the passenger told investigators that the two had used cocaine and marijuana and been drinking alcohol in the hours before the incident, police said on Wednesday.Police have identified the man who died as 35-year-old Conrad Lowman. He was the second man in three days to die after being shocked by a Taser gun during an altercation with a Jacksonville officer.Officers responding to a report of a hit-and-run crash in the 200 block of East 5th Street at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday found Lowman fighting with the man who turned out to be his passenger, Abdul Taylor. Mote HERE